


i tend to keep my heart locked water-tight

by crowdyke, Toucanna



Series: the four times casey and izzie almost have sex and the one time they do [4]
Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: (Almost), Angst, F/F, Hate Sex, Light Smut, baby's first fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowdyke/pseuds/crowdyke, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toucanna/pseuds/Toucanna
Summary: “Clear it up for me, Newton. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know.” Izzie’s tone is scathing, but for the first time in their fight, she drops her gaze to the ground. It’s a moment. An admission. An eye in the storm. “I don’t know, Iz. What are we doing?” Casey’s voice has changed. It’s not angry. It’s a challenge. The question hangs in the air between them like a wall. They stare at each other, breathing heavily, each sure the other can hear her heart thundering.Casey and Izzie go to track practice.
Relationships: Casey Gardner/Izzie
Series: the four times casey and izzie almost have sex and the one time they do [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553503
Comments: 10
Kudos: 394





	i tend to keep my heart locked water-tight

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello hello! isabella here. welcome to part four of this series :) sorry that these two took so long, anna and i are both crazy busy and _insufferable_ perfectionists when it comes to this kind of thing, so i assure you, every single detail has been discussed to death. there's a lot of angst in this section, but hold on until the end when things get spicy. don't think i've forgotten what series we're writing.

“Alright, alright. Nice work. Take a quick water break and then let’s get back to it,” Coach Crowley blows her unnecessarily shrill whistle twice, just for good measure.

Casey’s legs feel like they’re made of paper someone tried to stand on its end. She wobbles over to her water bottle, collapses on the bench, and dumps the water right into her face, guzzling most of it and relishing the rest that soaks her front. The air is so thick and hot that Casey thinks it might be sweating for her. A couple yards away, Izzie is crumpled on another bench, water streaming down her chin. She stares into space, hands knotted atop her rapidly bouncing knee. She appears both intensely focused and entirely zoned out. Concerned, Casey summons the strength to stand and make her way over to the other girl.

“Tired, Izzie?” Casey says, teasing gently as she fixes her bedraggled hair into a more respectable ponytail.

“What makes you say that?” Izzie snaps, standing up immediately and unceremoniously dropping her water bottle into the dirt.

“Uh...no reason?” Casey offers confusedly. She steps back slightly. “You, uh, wanna get out of here after practice?” Casey hopes that whatever’s bugging Izzie might be cured with a little alone time. Maybe they’d swing by 7-Eleven and grab a slurpee to cheer her up a bit. It was so hot, after all, and maybe she just needed to cool down.

“Not really. I have to study,” Izzie says, not looking at Casey.

“What? Since when do you _study?_ ” Casey grins and good-naturedly nudges Izzie with her shoulder. Far from bumping Casey back as expected, Izzie trips over a chunk of uneven grass and stumbles to the ground.

“What the HELL, Casey?” Izzie says, tears clearly welling in her narrowed eyes, though she angrily attempts to blink them away. “What was that for?” Her knee shines red with what looks to be an unpleasant scrape. Casey winces.

“Hey, hey! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to fall!” Casey rushes to her and offers her hand. “Jeez, Izz, I really am sorry. ”

“Whatever, just...give me some space, Casey.” Izzie glares at Casey’s extended hand as she stands without accepting it, then stomps off towards Coach Crowley without a backwards glance.

Casey’s brow furrows and she knows the hurt is shining like a bruise on her face. Elsa always said she was an open book, but she’s never felt this raw before, this exposed, as when...her girlfriend? Her best friend that she kisses? Her girl?

As when her _Izzie_ stormed away from her, She feels something sour welling up in the pit of her stomach, and suddenly, the thought of running for another hour sends a wave of nausea through Casey’s body. She doesn’t have long to dwell on it, though, before the shriek of Coach Crowley’s whistle pierces the air.

...

For the rest of practice, Casey’s entire rhythm is off. It’s embarrassing. It’s usually nothing for her to push through, or even relish, the burn of the lactic acid in her legs, but today it’s doing nothing but slow her down. Everything seems to take twice as much effort as usual and she lags behind her teammates. When they sprint, it seems to take minutes for her muscles to fire. When they stop, her lungs resist filling with air. Coach Crowley fumes on the sidelines, looking like she’s about five seconds away from demanding that she hand over her uniform on the spot. Casey grimaces apologetically whenever she runs by.

She doesn’t get it. A couple days ago, she was sexting Izzie on a family road trip. Izzie even _initiated_ it. They were supposed to hang out that night, then that weekend, and Izzie cancelled on her twice. She’s sure it has to be something going on at home, but she thought Izzie was comfortable enough to tell her about those kinds of things. It makes no sense to Casey. In a way, it seemed that night at the track had irreparably changed something in their friendship, closed some door of honesty that just Casey couldn’t seem to open again.

Meanwhile, Izzie has her best practice of the season, consistently leading the pack by a full length through every exercise, face masked with concentration and something unreadable. Izzie breathes hard and drips with sweat and her muscles tremble with every step, but she does not slow down. Casey stays behind, just staring at her back through each drill. She’s never seen Izzie run faster.

When coach finally, _finally_ calls for a cooldown lap, Casey decides that she’s going to try and talk to Izzie. She’s given her space for all of practice—perfectly reasonable that she’d try and catch up with her now. She jogs ahead towards her, ignoring the protests of her aching limbs. Just as she’s within a few feet of her side, Izzie quickens to a faster jog. Lungs screaming, Casey picks up the pace. Izzie runs faster. She can hear Coach Crowley’s exasperated yell from across the track but she ignores it and forces her dying legs into a pitiful sprint. She’s _almost_ caught up with her when Izzie stops dead in her tracks and doubles over.

Casey screeches to a halt and narrowly avoids crashing into her. When she looks up, Izzie’s hunched forward with her hands on her scraped-up knees, her entire body heaving with every inhalation. What Casey thought was sweat dripping from her face now appear to be tears, leaking silently from swollen eyes. Casey’s heart cracks in two, split with pain and confusion.

“Izzie?” Her voice is raw.

Casey hesitantly rests a hand on Izzie’s shaking shoulders.

She flinches away, stumbling out of Casey’s reach. She feels stripped bare, watching Izzie walk away and into the glare of the evening sun without a backwards glance.

...

 _CRASH._ Casey slams her locker shut. For a moment, she rests her forehead on the cool blue metal, lungs still burning. She can’t bring herself to change her clothes, yet—everything is too loud. The fluorescent lights, the crash of the lockers, the suffocating scent of teenage sweat, her teammates calling “see ya later!” over their shoulders as they leave. Casey’s head is loud, too. She spins with the feeling of Izzie pulling away, the bitter sting of her words, the memory of her hands and lips. The metal under her forehead has become sickeningly lukewarm, and like all of it, too much. Casey pulls away, still breathing hard. The last of her teammates wishes her goodnight and the locker room becomes empty and filled with blissful silence.

She makes her way to the sinks, disrupting the quiet with the overwhelming noise of running water. It is bitingly cold as she splashes her face, massaging the coolness into her jaw, her temples, behind her ears. As the water drips off of Casey’s skin, she tastes salt and licks it off her lips. She braces her hands against the edge of the sink. When Casey meets her own eyes in the mirror, there’s an angry rawness behind them that she doesn’t quite recognize.

She’s confused. She’s hurt. But she knows she loves Izzie. She loves her like a train barreling over a bridge, that has no way of knowing if the path ahead is sturdy but trusting that it must be. She loves her as a bird loves to fly. With reckless abandon. With love as survival.

So why is everything between them so difficult? Why does every step forward feel like two steps back? They almost have sex at a wedding but Casey still chokes on the word “girlfriend”. They sext on family road trips but Izzie’s hands still shake when they touch her skin. Casey avoids Izzie, Izzie avoids Casey, they flinch away from each other like startled prey. No sudden moves.

Casey shakes herself out of her head and douses her face with water again. Her baby hairs glue themselves to her skin. She blinks twice; whatever vulnerability was in her eyes clears itself away. Suddenly, there’s the deafeningly loud, unmistakable _CRASH_ of a locker behind her. Casey jumps, startled—she’d thought she was alone.

When she pokes her head around the corner, she sees Izzie hunched over on a bench, tense with frustration, angrily yanking at a shoe which appeared to be stuck on her foot.

“Jesus—fucking— _Christ_ —” Finally, she is able to wrench the shoe off. When she does, she chucks it into the lockers. CRASH. There’s something on fire in Izzie’s eyes, something ready to explode. Casey clears her throat, staring pointedly at the remaining shoe.

“Can I help?” She asks carefully, inching closer.

Izzie detonates. It’s zero to one hundred.

“Why do you feel like you need help me all the time? You and your whole _fucking_ family?” Izzie’s standing and shouting, fists balled at her sides. “I’m not some fucking charity project to look good on your college resume, tell your mom who you’re too busy hating to see that she’s trying, tell her that. The clothes and the quiche and fucking _you,_ not everything’s fucking _about_ you, Casey—”

Casey is 100% blindsided by Izzie’s reaction and immediately goes on the defensive, scrambling for any position at all in the argument she didn’t realize they were having.

“Okay, first of all, FUCK you—” Casey sputters, not knowing where to begin. “Second—You _really_ think I spend every fucking minute I can with you for my—for my college resume? ‘Cause I’m a goddamn _do-gooder?_ Yeah, Izzie. That’s the only reason why I’m with you. For the fucking brownie points,” Casey scoffs, insulted. “Stop being so selfish and get your head out of your ass.”

Izzie looks like she’s been slapped in the face. When she speaks, her voice is unnervingly quiet.

“Selfish?” She says, almost too softly to hear. “Selfish?” A little louder, then—“SELFISH? I’m fucking _selfish?_ Of all the things you say you call me _selfish?_ ”

Casey knows she went somewhere she shouldn’t have. “Izzie, wait—”

“Don’t you FUCKING interrupt me, Casey Gardner, fucking _selfish?_ You know when my grandma gave me that money for the clothes? I didn’t buy them because my deadbeat mother went to work high and lost herself another fucking job and I had to buy _groceries_ because I’m the fucking adult in my house, and—”

“Izzie, I didn’t mean it like that—”

“The FUCK you didn’t! You don’t know the _half_ of what I do every single goddamn day, and I can assure you none of it is for _myself_ —”

Casey finally shouts back, all the apology drained from her voice.

“Okay, FINE! You’re right! You’re right that I don’t know a goddamn thing about what you every day, because you don’t tell me, Izzie. I ask and I ask and I try to get to know you and all you do is fucking shut me out, because you. can’t. handle. people. knowing you. You know I wouldn’t run, right? You know you could show me who you are and—and what your family is like and—it’s not like I’d fucking disappear? What do you think I’m doing here, Izzie?”

“Actually, do you think you could enlighten me on that?” Izzie mocks. “What _are_ you doing, Casey? What the fuck are doing? You mind putting a label on whatever the hell this is for me? ‘Cause we go day after day and we kiss and fool around and I don’t know what the hell I can call this, if it even matters to you. Are we dating? Are we hooking up? Are we best friends? Are—are you my girlfriend?” Her voice breaks for just a second. The word weighed thickly on her tongue. Casey stares.

“Clear it up for me, Newton. ‘Cause I sure as hell don’t know.” Izzie’s tone is scathing, but for the first time in their fight, she drops her gaze to the ground. It’s a moment. An admission. An eye in the storm.

“I don’t know, Iz. What are we doing?” Casey’s voice has changed. It’s not angry.

It’s a challenge.

The question hangs in the air between them like a wall. They stare at each other, breathing heavily, each sure the other can hear her heart thundering.

_CRASH._

Izzie pushes Casey up against the lockers and she’s kissing her and kissing her, driving her body into Casey’s like it’s just another way to fight. Casey’s eyes are wide and she’s so caught off guard that she lets Izzie lead, lets her pin Casey’s hands behind her back as she makes a mess of her against the blue metal. Izzie’s scraped-up knee slips between her thighs and Casey knows it must burn but she grinds down against it, wishing desperately, suddenly, that Izzie would just tear off her track shorts. She moans into Izzie’s open mouth.

“My girlfriend,” Izzie mumbles against Casey’s lips, hands sliding up her shirt. “I want you—I want you to be my girlfriend.” Izzie kisses her so deeply that she can’t respond, then yanks at her running tee so it exposes more of her chest, trailing her lips down her neck. Casey gasps.

“Okay,” Casey says in between heavy breaths. “Okay, just—Oh my god.” Izzie’s replaced her knee with her fingers, rubbing hard circles between Casey’s thighs over her shorts and mouthing at her chest. Casey’s hips jerk involuntarily and she nearly crumbles, nearly lets her weakened legs give out. Everything is so loud. Izzie’s touch feels like fire, her lips are swollen, she’s coated in a new layer of sweat, and she’s so desperate for this that she think she might cry. She pulls her hands out from behind her back to tangle them in Izzie’s hair, fingers working against her scalp. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my—” Casey whispers, closing her eyes as Izzie touches her. She’s completely lost, wet through her underwear. There’s nothing else in the whole world besides the two of them. Right now.

There’s a moment, though, where she opens her eyes, squinting into the fluorescent lights on the locker room ceiling. Loud. A bolt of something uneasy shoots through her. This isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s meant to happen for them, angry and confused and the extension of a screaming match. She knows they need—they deserve—something softer.

Candles.

So, despite every nerve ending on her wrecked body screaming for her to let Izzie keep going, she pulls her hands from Izzie’s hair and places them on her arms, gently. A departure from the fiery, angry touches of the past few minutes.

“Izzie,” Casey says, her voice overwhelmingly soft.

It’s enough to make the other girl pause. “Izzie...I think...can you stop?” She’s still breathing heavily, but she can already feel her heart slowing down. Izzie pauses, looks up.

Casey sees the tears welled up in her eyes. One spills over and trails its way down her skin, tracking through the shine of sweat. Casey cups Izzie’s face and meets her eyes, then plants her lips over the tear, right on her cheekbone. It’s salty.

Izzie recoils like she can’t bear to be touched. Suddenly, everything open in her face is wiped away. A mask reappears.

“Okay,” She says, voice numb and expression blank. She steps back.

Izzie picks up her street shoes and duffel bag with a practiced indifference. Casey leans breathlessly against the lockers, even still. She doesn’t know where to put her hands. There’s no acknowledgement on Izzie’s end of what just happened—what just almost happened. She meets Casey’s eyes, unnervingly, when she goes to leave.

“See you tomorrow, then.” The locker room door swings open, then shut, and Izzie is gone.

Sweat drips down Casey’s back. The locker room is cacophonously silent once more.

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully we will have the last section up within the next week(?) to week and a half(?) we're both going to write it, but it's going to be much longer and very feelings-y, so there's a chance it could be a while. don't forget to follow anna (@villanever) and me (@theatrelesbabe) on tumblr!


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